Begin the morning in the dark and quiet again – but there is a glimpse of sunrise to come where the clouds have parted. In the background the chants of the Monks from the Monastery of St. Ottilien. Peace is in the air … beautiful, eternal, above all mortal being.

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” … at last bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.”

Gen 2:23

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We have lost our way and make grave errors that antagonize and divide, make us enemies in the most fundamental areas of our life – in the most sacred areas – places from which our happiness, joy, and contentment – meaning and purpose are meant flow.

Perhaps no area of error and divergence is any greater than that of understanding man and woman – understanding their sacred identity and divine value.

God willed the creation of man and woman. They share perfect equality, one to the other. Each possess inalienable dignity as they are made to be. Efforts of any kind to subvert this are reckless, utterly destructive, contrary to nature, God’s will and doomed to fail.

In creating man and woman as helpmates to one another, we see God’s wisdom and goodness. Together in Holy Matrimony we see God’s image – – – God as pure spirit, pure and steadfast love, and union with us.

Men and women: marry and honor your pledge of union. No absent fathers. No single mothers. No out-of-wedlock births. No more abortions. No more rebellion against God.

Men and women are made for one another – as a communion of persons in the intimate manner in which God is unified with the human person. Two as one – complimentary to one another. One flesh, “bone of my bone.”

As one we are entrusted with creating new life – sharing in God’s work of divine Creation. In this we have personal responsibility for the world around us: how it will be, what it will do – whether it is dominated by Good or Evil, Truth or Lie, Life or Death.

Does not our faith and heritage give question to “same sex marriage,” to “multiple genders” and a self-claim to gender?

Shalom.

Prayer for the Dying

All-powerful and merciful Father, in the death of Christ you have opened a gateway to eternal life. Look kindly upon MargaretMcCurdy is suffering her last agony. United to the passion and death of your Son, and saved by the blood He shed, may she come before You with confidence. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Difficult subject. I have tweaked this several times in the hopes of not alienating others while trying to focus on restoring some good to our present circumstances.

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The psychology of the individual can never be exhaustively explained from himself alone: … clear recognition is needed by the way (one) is also conditioned by historical and environmental circumstances … individual psychology is not merely a physiological, biological, or personal problem: it is also a contemporary problem. (Emphasis added.)

Carl Jung, M.D. in “Psychological Types” (Collected Works, Vol. 6)

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Mass murder in Las Vegas.

Disorder does not spring up by itself no more than a flower blossoms without a seed.

The individual person does not (even in the best of times) possess much self-understanding. In our mass communication culture, where God and religious belief is minimized or attacked, disorder is magnified. Today we seem intent on division and antagonism. Political correctness is not a moral structure.

When “isms” proliferate disordered conduct can displace healthy and trusted beliefs. Those in authority can even advance chaos.

An individual’s disorder is conditioned by history, personal environment and culture – all the more when faith is lost and society has gone astray.

Evil seems to flourish when antagonism is more common. We pay a very heavy price for division and godlessness.

It is a time to draw together, to seek what we share in common, to build friendships and foster individualresponsibility so each might know prosperity and the contentment of personal achievement.

It takes discretion and determination to avoid disorder today. Only those with considerable self-understanding maintain a healthy distance. Religious narrative and a relationship with God are critical today.

You had best see who you are and what precisely your culture conveys … and most certainly turn away from those who advance disorder. Destruction is the obvious product of disordered people. We need to get well. To listen carefully and choose wisely.

The healthy person today will be more likely he or she who resembles as to modern society and disordered godless mass culture the disposition of a monk in plain clothes.

Shalom.

If you find this post helpful, please pass it along to others. Thank you.

Being Reported – It is being reported by several news organizations that a senior attorney at CBS expressed an absence of sympathy for those shot in Las Vegas because “country music fans often are Republicans – (and) gun toters.” One can only hope this is not accurately reported. Yet, it is surely the case that political hostility must be reduced by all.

There is an internal longing for harmony and happiness that lies deeper than ordinary fear or the desire to escape misery or physical destruction.

Czeslaw Milosz, in The Captive Mind

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The politics of the Left in American today fuels anger, conflict, division and violence. It does not seek to heal but rather to dominate and destroy those who disagree with them. They proceed just as Milosz saw under Communist rule in Poland and Eastern Europe.

Today in American, Czeslaw Mislosz would likely be persona non grata among those on the Left for he appealed not to hate and hostility but to our better human nature: the divinely planted desire for harmony and happiness.

Would not this nation excel if we sought first harmony with others? Of course it would. But first we must say to those who shout, malign, insult and act out violently: “Stop – calm down – are we not brothers and sisters, neighbors, friends?”

The fever pitch is far too loud today. The angry voices of the Left are breaking bonds that hold us together. The distance between the privileged elites and the common person is far too great. Those on top act in isolation and expect others to conform to their wishes despite any discomfort those wishes might cause in the life condition and circumstances of those without privilege.

Those in power forget that communities are built on relationships from which trust and fellowship flow, and harmony is the common treasure.

Nothing would become us more at this moment in American history than to say to those who shout: “Be quiet, sit down – let’s share a table and a meal and talk about things we have in common and the harmony and happiness that we each seek because God made us good and wishes our relationship with Him and one another.”

When the apostles preached, they could assume evenin their Paganhearers a real consciousness of deserving the Divine anger. The Pagan mysteries existed to allay this consciousness, and the Epicurean philosophy claimed to deliver men from the fear of eternal punishment. It was against this background that the Gospels appeared as good news. (Emphasis added.)

C.S. Lewis, in The Problem of Pain

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This from the chapter entitled “Human Wickedness.” Reading it is some indictment of us today.

Think about it, Lewis notes that the Pagans 2000 years ago were conscious of their faults and thought themselves deserving of divine punishment. Further, Lewis points out that this was state of mind and consciousness that allowed the Gospels to be received as “Good News.”

That said, one must ask: Are we anywhere close to such consciousness? I think you know the answer.

We seem to lack the humility of the Pagans. This, I observe, is the price we pay for our intentional separation of man from God. Indeed I would say that the last seven centuries have put us on a steady trajectory away from God and humility. Imagine having less humility than unbelievers. Imagine today that we lack the consciousness to receive the Gospels as men and women once did when Christ appeared and Christianity flourished. Such a thought is worthy of our contemplation.

It may well be that we need a radical abandonment of our egocentric life in favor of the humility we once possessed in earnest. When we think less of ourselves we might think more of God. That cannot be anything but helpful today.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts … perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

Seneca

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Seneca has something here. We have seen people who manage power very nicely with calm and grace – but they are a distinct minority in time. God’s deeds, of course, are masterfully offered and employed. His power is perfectly expressed. Not so in man’s conduct.

If you want to understand Washington today, think of Seneca.

Corruption here today in Washington is rooted in the fear of the loss of power. Yes, this is the entrenched Washington elite – both parties, the bureaucracy and mass media, in the entertainment community, et al; they display a fear a loss of power, status, etc. They liked “being liked.”

Those who have power and influence simply refuse to release their comfortable grip on status, influence – power. They profit from the status quo and those who would disturb it are not welcome.

Let’s face it. People are self-interested. The greater the grip – the more prominent the fear.

One of the the hardest things to do is to acquire the experience of others. We live in our own experience; our fears and insecurities frequently govern – and more so among the godless.

Truth: the acquisition of another’s experience necessitates a growth in the Spirit, a faith which denominates one’s humility and God’s supremacy – reduces mortal existence to a passing moment and eternity to its rightful place. In this God-centered view, fear is vanquished and power need not corrupt. We are made, you see, for humility, not fear, for eternity not mortality.

If you want to understand corruption. Know this: it is present today. It is present among the powerful and privileged and when you see it you are seeing (as Seneca notes) fear. Yes, fear begets corruption. And, yes, those who are in relationship with God do not fear … and those who are not so inclined show fear. The latter is inevitable.

Think about how the powerful see and name “the basket of deplorables” and how they react when they are not favored, and how they react when a person is elected who challenges them: yes, the person and his or her supporters are attacked, and attacked, and attacked.

The fear of the loss of power is a mighty destructive force. Yet, our strength and identity has nothing to do with status, or power, wealth or privilege.

Modern society has … ‘lost its plot.’ Slavishly following its false gods and idols makes no sense in a spiritually awake life.

Anthon Maarten

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Mr. Maarten, a self-identified psychic, has something here – particularly if you recognize that much of our discourse is influenced by, and in a sense governed by, the mass media culture and (as to private exchange) often conveyed by impersonal means of technological communication and through “social media” (or anti-personal media – if you prefer accuracy).

One can imagine what comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell might say about this.

Most likely he would identify the vast difference between discourse today and the deeply personal and supernatural discourse of primitive tribal peoples and any number of large cultures over the ages whose essence was of religious narrative and the communal and personal experience of religious existence – of the spiritual life of the human being.

Yes, they had full existence while we have advertising and quarter-baked (at best) political ideology and the heavy hand of government, academia, media and technology in the hands of vested elites.

Look around you at television and the characters who occupy news discourse. Have you ever heard a stranger group offering the most fanciful and bizarre observations and proclamations all without a shred of expertise – wandering into psychology, history, political philosophy and what-have-you armed with but makeup, ideology, bias and a common Leftist script? Horsefeathers! If only they were required to wear red bulbous noses and big rubber feet … providing fair warning is only fair.

And then there is the Hollywood sequestered loony-bin. No shortage of derailed cabooses there. And now print “media” – filling in the cracks of nonsense spun in political realms. And politics itself – endless strange utterances, inexcusable inertia, oddball explanations and vast projects which embed madness in public institutions and those who drink from their waters.

… lost plot, indeed …

Beware. The mass cultural voice you miss may be your salvation. Earplugs do nicely today.

Me? I opt for Bach solo cello pieces in place of the voices and their image. But then, I have a spiritual life to live.

Freud … replace(d) religion with psychology. In this therapeutic vision, we should stop the fruitless searching for a nonexistent meaning and instead seek self-fulfillment.

Ron Dreher, in The Benedict Option

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In a section of his book (“The Triumph of Eros”) Dreher shows the overt contemporary shift in America (and Western) culture to the glorification of Self over God; and, then discusses the subsequent rise of eros which produces a dramatic divide between and Believers and non-believers and the subsequent attack on religion and those who are religious.

As sociologist Philip Rieff so simply states – the shift presents this: “Religious man was born to be saved. Psychological man was born to be pleased.” (Emphasis added.)

As time unfolds we see that “pleasing” found its base in sexual matters: in easy no-fault divorce, lurid entertainment, contraception, abortion, “re-defining gender,” same-sex marriage, female teachers (often married with children of their own) engaged sexually with young and under-aged students, homosexuality and its advocacy, and now “transgenderism.”

Recent decades seem to have established that in an unbelieving culture “freedom” produces carnal chaos.

Yet, the shift we have witnessed has one very fundamental flaw: cultures survive when their normative institutions support and protect what is implicitly good and ordered to human prosperity and happiness. Absent institutions which do this and culture fragments, and then eventually collapses.

You see it is a hard-sell to convince neutral listeners that bad is actually good.

Illustratively, a failure to maintain a steady growth in the birth rate will finally result in a vulnerable, aging population and extinction – first, by the way, manifest in the presence of fractured families, out-of-wedlock births, and children born to teenage mothers accompanied by the growth of a dependent class composed of able-bodied workers who have been consigned to inactivity.

Perhaps the most troubling part of what we see around us is: the ignorance of elites who do not contemplate the course of self-destruction upon which we have embarked.

As the esteemed philosopher, Canadian Charles Taylor so succinctly states:

“The entire ethical stance of moderns supposes and follows on from the death of God (and of course, of the meaning of the cosmos).” (Emphasis added.)

We live in a time of testing – of a very fundamental test and it is this: God or no God.

Yes, each of us must elect God orgodlessness and the chaos and utter collapse and death that godlessness brings.

In a sense this is a privileged time. Few generations has faced so critical a challenge, faced a war as to preserve the goodness of being and believing … and make no mistake: it takes courage to elect God in the presence of the aggressive godless class – social relations being what they are per se.

Good luck, Friends.

Shalom.

The Great Divide. Want to know how great the divide is between “the elites” and the rest of us? Harvard University named Bradley Manning (a “transgendered” man previously convicted of espionage) as a Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government. Or is it the Kennedy School of National Destruction? Birds of a feather flock together.

My apology for the miscues in the text today. I wrote this early this morning in a crowded and noisy breakfast joint while a bit under the weather … Yes, I am on the road and when I could access it mid-morn, I was on a friend’s computer and had no easy access to my earlier text.

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… psychologists … realize that there are really two processing systems at work in the mind at all times: controlled processes and automatic processes.

Jonathan Haidt, in The Happiness Hypothesis

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Psychologist, professor and author Haidt is commenting on the functioning of the brain. His point is a simple and important one, the human person is not controlled by reason, rather much of what we do is automatic – while only some of what we do is the result of “controlled response.” That is: we are not in any way close to complete control of our actions, rather that portion of our conduct which is authored by our capacity to reason is limited and depends on our intellect, insight and life experience.

What might this mean for us in contemporary mass communication culture? Well for one thing it might lead us to consider free speech more carefully – particularly public media and “protest” speech. What do I mean?

We rather easily assume that media speech and protest speech is worth our attention. But what if speakers do not show any particular capacity for reason? What if they possess no education? Are ruled by rote ideology? What do you know of their human experience? What insights have they formed based on their experience? How exactly are these speakers in any manner astute and informed? Perhaps they are quite limited in many respects? The question becomes: why listen to mobs and “talking TV heads?” Would you go to a pastry maker for neurosurgery?

When you consider free speech you would be well advised to recognize that free speech does not require listening. Much of what is said by mob and media is utterly worthless and listening to mob and media speech is often a waste of time. You would be far better served by reading, listening to only those who have demonstrated insight and extensive life experience and education.

By the way, the days of listening to the B.A. from Harvard are long past; education being what it is today – they know very little. Big ditto as to celebrities and the talking heads with a degree in “communication.” Nothing there, folks.

Discrete listening is the order of the day. Be selective.

Shalom.

Postscript – Human history is long past the foolishness of Marxism. Sadly, the Left/Liberals/Progressives have not kept pace. They still live in Europe of the 1840’s. Wake up Bernie Sanders!

Psychiatrist Carl Jung spoke these simple and decisive words at the end of a famous BBC interview. Simple and important. Lost to us in our mass communication, a-religious, secularized and highly-politicized culture.

Yes, we have distanced ourselves from God and lost any significant depth of understanding of our Self, the meaning of human existence and our many telltale habits and expressions of need – both healthy and unhealthy.

We are strangers to spiritual existence and stand without meaning. Hence, we often manifest confusion, violence, hostility, anger, addictions and self-destructive behavior … even individual and collective insanity.

Yes, we have abandoned the wisdom compiled over centuries.

Who among us reads and employs the classics in literature to navigate from day-to-day, crisis to crisis? Which of those who would lead us have any depth of understanding of human history? Case in point – Venezuela leeches toward totalitarian communism and repression of faith and freedom and no American politician or public commentator mentions The Monroe Doctrine which for years has been our claim to peace and freedom in the hemisphere. Frankly, with all the faux education and the abject failure in places like Harvard and Yale, we are dumber and far less insightful.

And, what about moral philosophy? Noted scholars have documented the loss of moral reasoning and our moral development in our own time. Who among us focuses national attention on this? Yet, destructive immoral conduct abounds with more on the way (if one listens to the mobs and academics and their demands and misguided notions).

So where does Dr. Jung say meaning comes from? Simple: meaning comes through the unequivocal affirmation of the Self – through each person’s individuation, each person’s honest soul-searching quest for wholeness.

Forget the Leftist mob with its rote chants, costume dress, and acts of violence. Forget politics as a means to individuation, meaning, wholeness and one’s True Self. Meaning and wholeness require that each person engage their journey personally because each is a sacred being with meaning, and all journeys to meaning are by definition about one thing: man’s relation to The Infinite.

By the way, chanting some nonsensical hateful mantra is a clear sign that one is way off course – lost, far from wholeness. Ditto most political pursuits.

Mind you, the value of the American constitutional federal representative democracy is this: it enshrines and (when properly honored) insures each individual lawful citizen the pursuit of their sacred journey to full development and the realization of meaning – and neither the mob nor central government can deny this quest.

Indeed our nation’s constitutional structure is designed for our spiritual, psychological and material welfare. Yet, many falter – wishing others provide them material benefits while they ignore their own opportunity and obligation to journey to fullness, meaning, and maturity.

Truth is we were never intended to be a cradle to grave welfare state but that FDR, LBJ and Democrats, with moderate Republican assistance, made this so.

The quest for individual wholeness, uniquely the center of the American political structure, is ultimately a spiritual quest. Indeed, the mobs and ideologies that would destroy what we have get given are intent on our spiritual death – in favor of meaninglessness and totalitarian rule. There, of course, is no health, no soul, no wholeness, no freedom, no meaning in such an existence. So says Jung – and he is right.

Afterall, who among us wants to live in a time when the wisdom of the Ages is destroyed? Only those who are most lost and most mistaken. Pay heed.

… Jesus, perceiving that they were intending to come and take him … to make him King, withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone.

Jn 6:15

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If politics and power had a primacy – made all the difference in the world, why would Jesus withdraw to the mountain by himself? Why would he NOT accede to that position of power? Because it is not of ultra importance.

No, relationship with God is preeminent. That is the essential aspect of human existence that complete each of us and perfects as far as is possible human society.

Ignore your spiritual existence and nothing you do will succeed, but rather will only divide and destroy.

That said, what Sunday political talk show ever focuses on man’s relation to God? What Judge seems to reflect any appreciation for what is recorded in the above Gospel passage? What media member or newspaper?

Those who speak only of politics are unable to lead for they know little and what they know glorifiesnot God but them – and decline follows, after the chaos and division that they create.

Listen more carefully. Be discrete when it comes to public chatter. Find a home in Scripture until you hear the voices of sanity in the public square.